


A Pair of Boots

by SpaceCrazyArtist



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Thor (2011), Thor 1 Fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 20:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21087044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCrazyArtist/pseuds/SpaceCrazyArtist
Summary: Written for theAt DawnFan Zine. Refusing to accept his brother’s death, Thor takes a ship out of Asgard and follows him into the void of the falling Bifrost. What he finds is not at all what he’d been expecting.





	A Pair of Boots

“What are you doing?”

It was the third time Odin asked that question of Thor since Loki had fallen off the Bifrost, but still, Thor didn’t answer. There wasn’t time to explain, Loki was falling, and Thor had to move quickly; he had to pack, had to get a vessel, had to go after him. Frigga sat on Thor’s bed, eyes teary as she watched her son move about the room gathering items into a satchel. There were clothes for both him and Loki, a few freeze-dried rations and canteens of water, Loki’s favoured dagger, and a few books. He didn’t plan to take much and had no time to spare gathering more before he turned and headed for the flight hangar. 

Predictably, Frigga and Odin followed. “Thor,” Frigga tried, a wobble still in her voice from having just lost her youngest child, “please, what are you doing? Where are you going?”

Outside the ship he planned to take, Thor stopped and turned, pulling his mother into a hug and held on as tight as he could. There was a time when he feared he’d never see her again, cast out without power, without friends, and utterly confused in a new world he’d only been to once before. Holding her felt both good and awful, knowing this might be the last time. He pulled back, putting a hand on her cheek. “Fear not, Mother,” he told her, “I will find Loki and bring him home to us.” 

“These intentions are noble, but I will not lose another son!” Odin’s voice boomed around the hangar, echoing off the walls as he moved to stand between Thor and the ship. “This is folly, and I will not allow you to enter a fruitless quest in search of your brother. We will hold a feast, we will grieve, but you will not leave.”

“Father,” Thor turned and put a hand on his father’s shoulder, “I have great respect for you. You are my father, but more than that, you are my king, but in this, I will not yield.” While Thor spoke, guards closed in, swords at the ready, but Thor ignored them knowing if need be, he would have no trouble winning a fight, and though he didn’t need it for his plans to succeed, he wanted his parents’ blessing. “Mother,” Thor turned to her, eyes pleading. “I can find him. Either I find him alive and bring him home to us, or I find him…” He trailed off, not wanting to think about the alternative to finding Loki alive, but he waited, watching his parents. “But either way, I will find him… please,” he pleaded again.

With a sigh and a look from Frigga, Odin signalled the guards down. “Alright. Take a ship, find him, bring him back. But when you return, we are all going to have a very long conversation, and I fear you will not like it.”

“I agree, Father, there is much to discuss.” Thor’s voice was hard, and his eyes sharp as he looked at his father, leaving no doubt to the tone of conversation they would be having. There were lies and betrayals on both sides, on all sides, and Thor found it was time for some truths to be revealed, but first, he would find his brother. 

The ship he took was small, easy to manoeuvre and fast, just what Thor needed to find his brother, likely still falling away from Asgard. Flying to the edge of the Bifrost bridge, Thor looked around; he took the ship out of Asgard’s atmosphere and followed the still falling light of the Bifrost dome hoping to spot Loki along the way. The destruction was immense, pieces of the bridge still falling, rocks and debris from who knew where adding to the chaos along with nebulous looking clouds in reds and blues mixing to form a light of their own. Everything was jumbled together making it nearly impossible to spot one tiny being among everything else, but Thor was determined. He’d failed his brother once already; he would not fail him a second time.

For several hours Thor searched. All around him wormholes opened, caused by the power of the Bifrost or maybe Loki’s power, or perhaps the energy came from Asgard herself, still close enough to be seen, but nothing more than a pale dot in the distance. Whatever was the cause, and Thor didn’t honestly know as astrophysics was never his forte, their gravity was immense, and Thor’s ship kept getting caught in the event horizon. He pulled away from one only to be trapped in a gravity well of another. His ship, engines running at full power, was not strong enough to pull away no matter what he tried and eventually the hull would be crushed, leaving him to the same fate as his little brother, unless he came up with a solution quickly.

Thinking fast, Thor figured his only chance of survival was going straight through and hoping that following the flow of gravity, like getting caught in an ocean riptide, would be enough to keep his ship from being pulled in two. He turned around, pointing the ship towards the middle of the wormhole and let gravity take over. Rocks, bits of the rainbow bridge and Bifrost dome swirled around him as he shot through the portal until suddenly everything stopped, and Thor was falling through a planet’s atmosphere. 

The ship was still in one piece, a small miracle, but the ground was coming upon him fast, and the engines were sputtering in their attempts to restart. As he drew closer to the ground, he could make out tiny details: a large lake, mountains in the distance, and, between the two, a village, with several farms. His best hope was steering the ship away from the habitable areas and making a crash landing into the lake. Though his full engines weren’t working, his bottom thrusters seemed to be functioning correctly, and he was able to slow his decent enough that the water landing didn’t cause his entire ship to explode with the impact.

With a grunt, Thor rolled out of the pilot’s chair, falling to his hands and knees, and crawled to the wall to pull himself to a standing position as the ship bobbed in the water. The controls for the top hatch were close enough for him to reach without moving too much and he pressed them as he called Mjölnir to his hand. Above, the sky was a rich, beautiful blue with fluffy white clouds drifting lazily in a gentle breeze that smelled fresh and sweet. The lack of salt in the air indicated that the body of water he was on was actually a lake, as he’d suspected, and not an ocean, though it still had enough wave movement to carry him closer to shore.

Another small mercy.

Three yards from the sandy shores the ship sunk, too heavy for the shallow waters to keep it afloat and though he was only in waters about a yard deep, he didn’t fancy the idea of getting his leathers wet. Thor was grateful the ship had sunk into such shallow water keeping the things he brought with him safe from a watery end while he went to explore the lands around him. With Mjölnir in hand, Thor was easily able to fly out of the open hatch and land safe and dry on the shore. He turned back, looking at his small vessel sticking out of the lake and sighed, wishing his landing could have been less conspicuous, but there was no helping it.

The area was just as beautiful on the ground as it had been from the air and it looked a lot like Asgard in the spring. The air was the same sweet smelling floral scent he’d known his entire life, and he couldn’t help smiling at the thought of how much he and Loki would have loved to explore the new land together. He turned in one direction, taking his best guess as to where he would likely find other inhabitants and started to walk, wishing yet again that Loki was beside him to share the adventure. It wasn’t long before he came to a farm with a light blue stable set at the bottom of a grazing hill and small beasts roaming the fenced lands behind it. It was beautifully picturesque with a small cabin to the left of the stable far enough away to keep the animal noises from reaching the dwelling. It was covered in rich green ivy with roses growing in small boxes under each window, and a pair of boots set by the red front door. 

Thor stopped, rooted to the spot and unable to move even a single step forward as he stared, eyes wide. He knew those boots, had seen those boots countless times in his rooms, set by his own door in precisely the same way. He’d seen those boots in the mornings, after a night of passion, and traipsing through mud while the owner complained about their newest tutor. He’d seen those boots as they moved around the sparring ring on Asgard, or stood still on Alfheim while magic flowed around them. It was impossible, but Thor knew those boots as well as his own. 

As he stared, the door opened, and Thor’s gaze jumped up to see a small boy run outside, laughing with a bright smile that was missing teeth. The scene made Thor smile; the little boy looked so much like how he and Loki used to look running around as boys. The smile on Thor’s face faded as he took in the boy’s too familiar features with his jet black hair and the greenest eyes Thor had ever seen except on one other person, but that was impossible, just as the boots had been. The little boy turned to call back into the house, then ran forward as a large shaggy dog chased after. 

The two ran around the yard, not a care in the world while Thor watched from a slight distance away. He wanted to move forward, look in the cabin to see if Loki was really there but he couldn’t move; he could barely breathe. It didn’t take more than a few minutes before he had his answers and Loki walked out, feet bare and called for the little boy to stay in the yard and away from the small pond that was at the boundary of the property. Thor continued to stare, eyes wide and disbelieving, then utterly confused when a man, brunette with a broad smile that looked a lot like the little boy’s only with all his teeth, followed behind Loki. A hand settled on the small of his brother’s back as the two stood on the porch, much too close to be strangers. And much too close for Thor’s liking. There was a familiarity with them that spoke of years of knowing one another, which, again, was impossible. 

Loki laughed at something the man said, turning to whisper in his ear, his eyes bright with happiness before he turned to look out over the land. Thor could tell the exact moment Loki spotted him; even from a distance, Thor could see the colour drain from his brother’s face and the man beside him startle. 

“Loki?” The man questioned, raising a hand to Loki’s neck. It was too much like his own intimate gesture for his liking, and Thor had to grit his teeth together so not to call Mjölnir to his hand and strike the man down with a lightning bolt. “Are you well? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have.” His brother whispered though Thor could only see his lips moving, not hear the words. He turned to look at the man and gave him a soft, nervous smile before pulling away. “I’ll be right back, Einar. I told Erik to stay clear of the pond, but I don't think he’s heeding my warning.” As Thor watched, Loki smiled reassuringly and pressed a kiss to the man’s jaw before stepping away and walking down the path towards Thor.

The two brothers watched each other as Loki approached, neither saying a word until they stood a half yard away from one another. “Brother,” Loki greeted.

Thor swallowed, looking Loki up and down. He looked good, healthy, fit, the creamy colour of his skin was slightly darker from sun exposure, and his once shoulder length hair was near to the small of his back, left loose to flow around his body. Thor wanted to kiss him, to pull Loki into his arms and never let go, but he held back, not understanding anything that had happened between Loki falling from the Bifrost and his own arrival on the planet. 

He cleared his throat, suddenly shy. “You look well, Brother. Very well. You ah-” he glanced back at the small boy laughing as he tried to get a kite into the air then back to Loki. “You- I don’t understand any of this.” It was clear time had passed, but how was that possible? “You have a family?”

Loki smiled looking back at the two playing below while the dog barked and jumped around their legs. “Sort of. Erik isn't mine if that’s what you’re asking, and I am well. Very well actually. Einir and I sort of,” he paused, a small smile on his face, “rescued one another. His wife had just died in childbirth from a rare complication, and I had just fallen off the Bifrost after-” Loki cut himself off and shook his head. “Let’s just say we were both in a bad place, but that little boy needed to be taken care of, and we figured it out together.”

Thor stepped closer, looking at his brother again and marvelling at how amazing Loki looked, happy, and weightless, like all of his burdens were suddenly gone. “I don’t understand.” 

“It’s been five years, Thor,” Loki told him raising a hand to Thor’s cheek. “I’ve missed you, but not enough to go home, which I could have done at any time. It was better this way, staying gone, healing. There’s been a lot I have come to understand about our family, myself, my place in Asgard. A lot of anger I had to work through, a lot of lies I needed to uncover and come to understand.”

Thor couldn’t stop himself, didn’t want to prevent himself from pulling Loki to him, cupping his brother’s face and pressing their lips together. It was meant to be a small press of lips, but the kiss deepened and grew in passion until they were pressed together, Thor’s hands gripping the small of Loki’s back while his brother’s hands were tangled in his hair. The kiss seemed to go on and on, each giving and taking, stoking the flames higher until they pulled back with a gasp, lips wet and swollen. 

“I left as soon as you fell. I went back to my rooms, packed and left to find you. I don’t understand how it has been mere hours for me, and years for you. I don’t understand how this man could have helped you and me, your brother, your lover, could not.” Thor pressed their foreheads together, grieving for the time lost, for not being the one to help Loki with all he’d learned of himself and their family. He meant it when he told his parents they would all need to have a long talk, but perhaps first he and Loki would have that talk alone. “You look so happy here.”

“I am happy here,” Loki whispered. “Did you truly leave as soon as I fell? I resigned myself to the knowledge no one would be looking for me. The lost prince of Asgard doomed by his own madness.” Loki looked pained, his eyes filling with water as he spoke. 

It was too much for Thor to bare, and he once again pulled Loki forward to press their mouths together though the kiss remained simple. “I regret you having to heal alone, that I was not here with you. We could have discovered our family’s secrets together, healed together, but again I failed you.” He failed Loki when all he wanted to do was go to war making his brother believe the only way to greatness was through a fist. He’d failed his brother when he was cast out, sent to Midgard leaving Loki to find out about his heritage on his own. He’d failed his brother when Loki was holding tight to Gungnir as they hung off the Bifrost as it fell into the void behind them. “You were only finishing what I started, and it took the thought of your death for me to wake up and realise.”

Loki surged forward, pulling Thor into a passionate kiss. He smiled a bright, happy smile that Thor hadn’t seen on his brother’s face in longer than he cared to admit. “It was a long time ago for me, Thor, and you’re here now. We can start anew. But...,” Loki broke off glancing back at the house, at Einar and Erik playing in the yard, the kite now high in the sky. “I can’t leave them; I won’t leave them. They’re my family as much as you are,” he whispered before turning back to look at Thor and kissing him once more. “You could stay with me… with us.” Loki stepped back, feet still bare on the muddy path and looking so very different, yet the same as the brother Thor had grown up with. Loki held out a hand, waiting for an answer. 

Thor glanced around him, up at the bright sky, back at the two playing and laughing in the yard while the dog jumped and barked, and finally to the pair of boots he knew so well. Loki was in there in front of him, he was safe, he was whole, and he was asking Thor for a small favour with hope on his face. Looking back at Loki, Thor nodded and took the offered hand.

“I’ll stay.”


End file.
